I'm back... with lentils, yes, you did read it right - lentils

I have decided to embrace the pulse. Having hated beans, chickpeas and the like ever since I became aware of Heinz's most popular blue-tinned product, I thought I would never see the day when I would actually like eating pulses. However, I'm trying to learn to like them and with this in mind, made a lentil salad today. Olive magazine landed on my doorstep this morning with a big thud and as I idly flicked through the pages of a mini-Italian recipes supplement, a salad caught my eye. Usually I'd see 'lentils' in the ingredients and immediately move on, but this time I decided to try it. It's a really easy recipe - green lentils from a tin, drained and rinsed (they flop out of the tin like rotten catfood), mixed with a quick salsa verde, a bit of chopped chorizo, roughly chopped charcoal-grilled artichoke hearts, and sprinkled with crumbled feta, cherry tomatoes and a drizzle more salsa verde. Easy. It was a bit too garlicky, and I can't pretend I love lentils yet, but pretty good. And it would make a nice extra for a picnic, if the torrential rain ever lets up.

I've not blogged for the past few months and I have missed it. I just needed a break - and I started a new job where I work pretty long hours so I haven't had the inclination or the energy to open my computer when I get home. I hope to keep it up though - I've missed documenting my meals. And I've just come back from Glastonbury, where a friend said I should have photographed my meals (mostly good, some very good, some bland or rubbish) and I realised the thought hadn't even crossed my mind - what a shame and what a wasted opportunity. Maybe next year.

Sunday lunch

If I felt stuffed last night, today I feel like I'm bursting at the seams, after a fantastic Sunday lunch. Mum cooked roast pork with leeks from the garden (pulled this morning in the drizzly rain) in a white sauce, roast potatoes, roasted parsnips and swede, peas, apple sauce.

Big.

And then there was pudding - blackberry and apple crumble with ice-cream. The apples were from up the road and Mum had cunningly made a big batch of blackberry and apple months ago and frozen it so it was ready for the crumble topping. Blackberry and apple is easily my favourite crumble. Apple's just a bit dull and all the sour plum/rhubarb types just don't cut the mustard. It was lovely, and I haven't had time for a Sunday afternoon snooze yet. It's dull and horrible and raining, so maybe now is the time... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Antipasti and fish curry

Last night we had an enormous meal. It began with antipasti and sherry - we piled little plates with marinated garlic cloves, sunblush tomatoes, avocada salsa, cold, sliced ham, black olives, marinated white anchovies, pepperdews, warm ciabatta and many other goodies.

If that wasn't enough, we then got stuck in to the main course - a delicate fish curry with coconut milk and tamarind, served with white rice and green beans with a chilli/black mustard seed and garlic dressing.

And then we had cheese...

I was stuffed.

Another Saturday fry-up

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I did miss tomatoes a bit, but I had lots of ketchup instead (sadly not pictured). And I see there was a nice space in the middle of the food where two halves of a cooked tomato could have nestled happily. That makes me miss them even more.

This is the life

To come in from a hard day's work to find a chicken roasting in the oven above a mirepoix of vegetables and some fluffy jacket potatoes - and be eating it all within half an hour - is ideal. The beauty was... it was all done for us by my kind mother. We'd gone back to my parents for the weekend and they'd gone out, leaving the food cooking for when my boyfriend, a brother and I arrived.

It was fantastic. We guzzled the moist and tender chicken (with crispy bacon on top), perfect spuds and a flavoursome mix of veg (onion, garlic, celery, parsnips, turnips and carrots, seasoned with black pepper and oregano). We also warmed a tin of sweetcorn for a bit of extra colour. Perfect. We had thought we'd get a takeaway but this was better by far.

crunchy salad

Tonight I came in late and wanted something fast and relatively healthy - I made myself a salad with spinach, tomato, mozzarella light (rubbish - no flavour - must remember not to buy it again), pinenuts and pumpkin seeds. I drizzed Belazu balsamic vinegar (the best in the business) and some posh extra-virgin olive oil over the top for some more flavour as the mozzarella tasted of nothing at all. It was nice though, and looks pretty colourful, don't you think?

Turkey tamarind

Last night we ate turkey stirfry with brown rice and tamarind sauce. I marinated the turkey in a jar of Bart's tamarind paste, the juice of a lime and lots of finely chopped garlic and ginger while I cooked the brown rice. Then I started some tenderstem broccoli off in a wok (just the thick, hard ends of it) before adding the meat and its marinade, then later on the stirfry veg, the tops of the tenderstem broccoli and some extra baby spinach leaves. It was delicious, and we each had a pot of leftovers for lunch today - even cold it tasted good. I normally have prawns when I cook tamarind, but turkey was tasty too.

Brunch at the Living Room

We met some friends for brunch at The Living Room in Islington. It was a bit confusing as they had a breakfast menu (10am - 5pm) and a brunch menu (12pm to 5pm). I had eggs florentine, which were nice, the eggs were runny, but the hollandaise sauce was a bit much. One egg was eggy enough for me. I ate the lot though, then felt a bit funny, and as if I needed another flavour in my mouth - fast. One of my friends had chosen eggs florentine too - she felt the same, so we ordered a dessert each. She had rhubarb crumble and I chose warm chocolate cake.

When it arrived I thought, oh dear, it looks like a treacle tart out of a tin - I hate it when places put cake on their menu, then give you some sort of a chocolate pudding. it didn't taste of much, but and at first I thought it was a bit chemical and not very chocolatey, but I carried on regardless. I'd already asked them to change my diet coke as it tasted of chemicals, only to be told it was Virgin cola and everyone says it tastes a bit funny. They kindly swapped it for some sparkling water for me. After a few bites of my pudding I realised they'd given me treacle instead of chocolate sauce, then a few more bites later, I noticed the pudding was more treacle than chocolate and it dawned on me (eventually - it was a Sunday morning) that I had the wrong pudding. I felt like I'd eaten too much to send it back, so I finished it - then felt sick as it really wasn't very nice. And because I realised I'd just eaten £4.50 worth of pudding that I hadn't even wanted. Pretty rubbish. Stupid Sunday brain. And, to top it all off, I saw people eating food that wasn't on the brunch menu, and realised the lunch menu had been available all along - a bit disappointing, as I hadn't really wanted eggs after my fry-up yesterday anyway. Oh well, c'est la vie.

A good English fry-up...

can rarely be beaten, except maybe by steak. Perhaps I should do an English breakfast with steak too - that would be cool. This was my fry-up this morning, which we had about lunchtime, so I guess I could call it brunch. As you can see, it has a fried egg, crispy sausages and ubercrispy bacon, grilled tomatoes (drizzled with balsamic vinegar for extra sweetness) and mushrooms and onions. I put a bit of cayenne pepper with the mushrooms and onions and a small clove of garlic for some extra kick. My other half had baked beans too, but I'm not a fan of them so I didn't. Neither of us like fried bread either, or black pudding particularly, so for my taste, all the basics were here. Maybe some potato waffles or chips would have been good too - but a bit unnecessary, I think. I had ketchup on the side, of course - how could you have a fry-up without Heinz ketchup? Impossible.

Tonight's sausage supper

Yay, I've caught up! This was what we ate tonight - Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Toulouse sausages, with olive oil/garlic mashed new potatoes (the new favourite, again) and tenderstem broccoli. I added grainy mustard and ketchup to my plate too - you can't have sausages and mash without ketchup, and mustard adds a certain kick. A fairy garlicky meal - but a good and filling one. I couldn't even finish my potatoes, and that doesn't happen often.

And another veg stirfry - yawn...

Hmmm, I've had a lot of stirfries recently. This was another one, a quick veg one on Wednesday night before I went out. I also dipped some mini wholemeal pittas in fresh tomato salsa while I decided what to eat. I constructed a stirfry sauce with a dash of sherry vinegar, grated fresh ginger and soy sauce. I would have put garlic in it too but I was too lazy and rushed to get the chopping board out. Nutritious - look at all that spinachy stuff.

Seafood Salad Supper

Oooh, yes, a seafood salad. I can't remember which night we had this, but it was sometime this week, maybe Tuesday. I put some mixed seafood together with onions, veg and salad in a marinade of lemon juice, garlic and olive oil and we had it on a bed of leaves. Nice and colourful.

Another turkey stirfry

This was good - we'd eaten a load of crap like crisps and pistachio nuts when we'd come in, so we thought we'd have a proper load of veg and the rest of the turkey for our main meal, without rice or noodles as we couldn't be bothered to cook them. We used an M&S stirfry pack - it was pretty luxurious, if that could ever be an appropriate adjective for a stirfry pack, with spring onions, strange oriental green leaves, baby corn, mangetout, courgette, red pepper, and much, much more. No beansprouts meant it seemed posh, as there was no apparent filler, but it did all shrink down to not very much.

Turkey and green veg stirfry

This was a turkey and green veg stirfry that my boyfriend made for us last Saturday for lunch. It was really good - I hadn't had
any dinner the night before and I needed something big and nutritious. I don't think you can really see them, but we had egg noodles too, and it had a sort of oyster sauce. Very nice and filling. The veg included leeks, broccoli, a green pepper, an onion and a couple of turkey breasts.

Friday = egg day

For breakfast, at least. I think I could have difficulties digesting eggs more than once a day. Eggs are funny - they're one of those foods that sometimes, inexplicably, make me feel sick as a dog, and other times they sort me out and stop me feeling sick as a dog. They're great on a hangover, but occasionally they can make me feel queasy even if I haven't caught sight of any booze for days. Strange. And, obviously, they're a great food - anything that's a key ingredient in cakes and baking must be pretty great. And they come directly from the hen - animal to plate, there's not much that can be done to muck them up, I hope.

But, anyway, having eggs for breakfast truly sorts you out for the day. We've been eating yoghurt, blueberries and sugar-free museli for breakfast recently, which feels like a healthy way to start the day, but we'd run out of yoghurt by Friday, so we realised it was a day for eggs. We each had two soft-boiled eggs with soldiers (which were spread with bovril - bovril toast and eggs is a fantastic combination, especially with scrambled eggs, or as soldiers with boiled). This photo's a bit dark, but the egg looks nice. Hmmm, I think I might be having boiled eggs for breakfast tomorrow too...

Valentine's Day cosy supper in

Wow, it's been some time since I've blogged. I hate that. Everything else has just taken over a bit recently - I've got a new job, I'm working from home too, whenever I get the time and I guess it's just even harder to find the time to do this. I've not stopped eating and cooking though, so I've taken the photos of food I've eaten over the last ten days (not all of it) from my camera and I'll try and remember what, when and why I was eating...

Here's the first. This was our Valentine's dinner. It was seriously lacking some green - I think we were going to have salad on the side but we didn't quite manage it. I don't buy steak very often, but every time I do I think we should eat it every week. It's just the best taste in the world. I was trying to use a few pans as possible, so I griddled the flat mushrooms, onions and tomatoes, then kept them warm and griddled the steak. Meanwhile, the salad potatoes were simmering, then I lightly mashed them with a drizzle of olive oil and a big clove of garlic (this is fast-becoming my most used potato accompaniment - it's just so quick and easy and goes with everything). It was good. Then we had something else I hardly ever buy - chocolate ice-cream (Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie) - that was great too. I'd get bored of chocolate ice-cream if I had it every day (maybe) but when you don't have it for ages, it's even better than you can imagine. This may not have been the most romantic of meals, but we liked it.

A satisfying pasta bake

This was another veggie meal - not sure why we're having so many of those at the moment. This was nice - we did a sort-of bake with mozzarella on the top and had it with salad. We had some sunblush tomatoes that were a bit old, so we bunged them into the sauce, with onions, lots of garlic and a red pepper, mixed the lot up with cooked brown penne pasta, sprinkled cubes of mozzarella on the top, then grilled it until the mozzarella was bubbling and beginning to brown. Why is it that by just making it look like a bake, it looks like so much more of a meal than just a pasta, veg and sauce?

I've put a photo of it in the dish, where it looks fairy attractive, and another one of it on the plate where it was a bit of a mess. Messy food is often the nicest, anyway. That's my excuse.

This pile of puke... isn't, thankfully, a pile of puke

It's a veg stirfry with thai green curry sauce. Well, Sainsbury's cheap equivalent. It was fine, but nothing to write home about - or blog about, really. I had the leftovers for lunch today. They were fine. I should have bothered heating them up, but I didn't.

Saturday night at the Vietnamese

This was the only part of the meal I took a photo of - and it was easily the best, so I'm not that sorry. We'd had some prawn crackers when we got there, then we scoffed the duck with pancakes, spring onions, cucumber, plum sauce and shredded carrot and radish (not sure why that's there, but it adds some colour to the plate). It was great. Every time we have duck, we wonder why we bothered ordering anything else. Surely it's one of the best flavour's in the world. By the time our main course arrived we were full, but we ate what we could then took the entire portion of singapore noodles home with us in a takeaway carton. It made a great breakfast on Sunday morning.

Proper stodgy food

When you get as much snow as we had today, you need a good, warming meal in the evening, with lots of fat and baking or roasting involved. Tonight we had chipolatas baked in the oven nestled around veg (onions, whole garlic cloves, pieces of yellow pepper, carrot and courgette) with roasted new potatoes and leeks in white sauce. Perfect winter food. I ate loads, but still feel hungry when I look at this photo and see the glistening fat on the potatoes. Such gorgeous flavours - proper stodgy food.

Beef stirfry with hoisin sauce

Ooh, this was good. We usually have prawns or pork, or something beginning with 'p' in a stirfry, but last night we had beef. Beef is goooood in a stirfry. We should have it more often. It feels a bit luxurious - which is funny, as it's cheaper than the big prawns we have so often. Hoisin and beef go well together too. We had leftover brown rice too, which only took a few minutes in the microwave. Very satisfying.

You'd think it was still Christmas...

It's been bloody cold today, our heating's screwed, I've had a craving for indulgent food all day and we had turkey curry for supper. And I was feeling lazy. I couldn't be bothered to make my own curry sauce tonight so we used a Sharwood's jar of rogan josh sauce, and I cooked it up with turkey, peppers, onions, garlic and a courgette - the usual veg suspects. There's enough to freeze for another night and it was quick and easy. Sometimes the ready made stuff feels so indulgent.

Oily fish on a Sunday

On the last few Sundays we've had a salad with oily fish for lunch and it's felt good. Today, we had a proper lunch so only needed a snack for supper (particularly after our mega-meal last night). So we finished off the meat and veg left over from our steak fajitas yesterday with some delicious Waitrose organic brown bread and marinated herring, for the oily fish bit. I think this Sunday oily fish thing we've got going is pretty good - it'll keep our essential oil count up, anyway.

Lasagne lunch

We went to see some friends last night and made sushi. I'm so annoyed - I didn't take my camera and they'd left theirs at work so I've got no photographic evidence. It was really fun - we made california rolls with salmon, tuna, avocado and fish sticks and sesame covered ones with the rice on the outside as well as nigiri and dipped the lot in soy sauce and a pretty vicious wasabi. We were pretty full after our sushi and a couple of spring rolls, but it was just the starter, and then we had noodles in home-made black bean sauce with scallops and prawns (fabulous - my two favourite shellfish). Then, although we were really stuffed, we all managed a bit of homemade treacle pudding with cream. We practically rolled home, our stomachs groaning, but it was such wonderful food we couldn't help but find our eyes were bigger than our bellies.

Anyway there was no need for breakfast this morning, but we had a friend coming round for lunch so by 12.30 I had to face the food. I cooked lasagne again as it seemed an easy option and we had it with salad with a mustard and garlic dressing and a bottle of fruity red wine. I'd made some more chocolate cakes on saturday to take to our friends so they did for pudding.

The best approximation of fajitas

The best fajitas are steak. There's no contest. It's just a great meal. We made ours today with onion, peppers, a courgette for some green, thin-cut frying steak, the juice of a lime, cayenne pepper and lots of garlic. They were great, as always. I'm sure they're not particularly authentic, but they're great just as they are, with salsa and flour tortillas.

Friday eggs and cake

It doesn't sound like a great combination... Thankfully it was eggs for breakfast and chocolate cake for an afternoon pick-me-up.

We had scrambled eggs for breakfast - a Friday treat. It really set me up for the day and I was barely hungry at lunchtime. I met my boyfriend for lunch in a Soho Thai restaurant but I was meeting someone in the afternoon and so I avoided all the great-looking garlic or curry dishes, unlike my boyfriend who had a sizzling dish of chili and chili squid. The smell permeated my clothes and hair and made me salivate like nothing else - my fried rice with prawns, pineapple and cashew nuts seemed extremely bland and boring in comparison.

I'd hardly slept on Thursday night and had a resulting low energy moment at about 5.00. I knew I wasn't going to get to eat until much later so I stopped by cafe nero as soon as I could and grabbed a slice of decadent chocolate chunk cake (or something). It was pretty gross. Why are bought cakes so dry and lacking any depth of flavour? The only thing to recommend it was the buttercream, which was the bit with the chocolate chunks (not like real chocolate though) but the icing was quite stale. I had another bit of the buttercream after I took this photo, then left the rest. Such a waste - I should learn not to order chocolatey things in cafes - I just don't get why they're always so horrid...

I can't even remember what we had for supper. Oh yes, another pork stirfry with noodles and chow mein sauce. My boyfriend cooked it for me as I collapsed on the sofa after we came - perfect.

Thursday evening meal - Sedir, Theberton St, N1

We went for meze tonight with some good friends. We shared a rather boring meze for 2, which was mainly a collection of dips and ordered a few separate meze plates to add a bit of interest. The prawns in garlic butter were rather overcooked, but dipping bread in the sauce made up for this. With flavoursome and crispy turkish sausages, a plate of halloumi, some goats' cheese, a plate of strange d0g-turd shaped meatballs in a bland tomato sauce and a very nice dish of mixed med veg in a tomato and garlic sauce, we had plenty of taste sensations. It was fine, but seemed quite pricey at £70 for four, with only one cheap bottle of wine and a couple of beers, a sorbet for pudding and my ice-cream.

I hadn't ordered ice-cream for pudding for at least 15 years and when it was the only thing appealing on the dessert menu, I thought I'd give it a go, for purely nostalgic reasons. The chips in the mint choc chip definitely weren't chocolate - and the wafer stuck in the middle was the usual cardboard texture, but I really quite enjoyed it and made sure the dish was clean.

Even more veggie fajitas

I can't get enough of these at the moment - could there be an addictive substance in the tortilla? It can't be in the combination of veg, as today I actually varied it. I had an onion, a clove of garlic, half a yellow pepper, a few mushrooms and a handful of cherry tomatoes, quartered. I shook a load of cayenne pepper over the top and had a big spoonful of Sainsbury's fresh tomato salsa for some extra spice.

Today's breakfast...

Looks a little bit nicer than yesterday's, I think. Today I had Rachel's Organic strawberry yoghurt with Alpen no-sugar muesli and Sainsbury's blueberries (half price at the moment). A lovely way to start the day. I also had a slice of toast with Sainsbury's wholenut peanut butter (no added sugar here either), as I needed a bit of extra oomph.

Posher than usual stirfry with pork

I ate this tonight at supper and it was cooked for me as I sat around - bliss. Him indoors cooked us pork stirfry with Blue Dragon hoisin and garlic sauce and some Sharwood's egg noodles. He used a Chinese stirfry pack from Sainsbury's - more expensive than the bog-standard packs we usually get with a bit of shredded cabbage and carrot, but it had spring onions and mangetouts in it for added crunch and extra taste. Well worth the extra fifty pence, I'd say.

This morning's breakfast

This may not look that appetising, but it was a revitalising way to start the day. We each had a Rachel's organic low-fat, summer fruits yoghurt with blueberries and I added some crunchy Alpen (no sugar) muesli to mine. I was so inspired by this breakfast I bought more Rachel's organic yoghurts and more blueberries today for more healthy, yoghurty breakfasts.

I know it looks a bit like dog-vomit; I realise I should have put the yoghurt in the bowl, sprinkled the museli on the top, then scattered blueberries over the surface as that would have looked prettier. I didn't though. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow and photograph it so you can see how pretty this breakfast can be.

Curry heaven - they still rule...

Especially when you come home late and starving and need some fast, nutritious food. Looking in your freezer, you choose a tupperware pot of reddish brown, homemade, frozen stuff, unlabelled of course - I'm not Delia - and wonder what it is. It's definitely not casserole - too reddish - it might well be bolognese or possibly curry. Didn't I make a chicken curry a few weeks ago and decide to freeze some? We didn't feel we could handle waiting for rice to cook and I realised there was also a garlic and coriander naan lying like an icey slab in the bottom of the freezer so I figured - if I microwaved it on full for five minutes then had a look, if it was curry I could stick the naan in the oven to defrost and warm through, and if it was bolognese I could put the pasta on asap and bob's your uncle, it would be a meal in minutes.

I whacked the oven on to 200 degrees - as even if I was cooking the pasta on the hob I knew it would help heat the room (unethical I know, but in my house of dodgy heating, the oven is often the best heat source around). Fortunately for my sense of ethics, I stirred the semi-frozen red stuff after 5 minutes blasting and realised it was definitely a chicken curry. I shoved the naan in the oven, put the chicken curry back in the microwave for another 5 minutes to make sure it was 'piping hot' and that was it - a meal in eleven minutes. Curries rule. And freezers. And microwaves and ovens. They rule too.

Curries Rule

Shilpa came out of the celebrity big brother house on Sunday night and pretty much summed up culinary life in two words, 'curries rule'. She has such wisdom. Having just finished my first takeaway curry from Vojan - the curry house near Angel that I was so happy to find a few weeks ago (see www.vojan.net) - I couldn't help but agree with her - curries rule.

There's something for everybody - mild, spicy, creamy, dry, veggie. I had a streaming cold at the weekend and fancied something to unblock my sinuses and, more importantly, something I could taste. We ordered a Shatkara Gosht (lamb cooked in calamansi juice [wild lemon], lemon leaf and naga chilli - a superb dish with lots of flavour, medium hot - £5.95), a chicken tikka massala, mainly to try the 'exotic sauce' and beacuse my other half wanted a creamy curry (dried chicken barbecued, tossed in butter with cultured yoghurt, fresh cream and served with exotic sauce - £5.95), bhindi bhaji (okra cooked in karala style - £2.45) and pilau rice (basmati rice aromatically flavoured with saffron - £2.00). I liked the menu, and the way dishes are described on it and it seems great value for round here.

And it was - even the cartons seemed flashy. We had high expectations for this curry and we weren't disappointed. It took 45 minutes to arrive - always a good sign as it indicates it might be be freshly made to order. The meat was of good quality and the portions were reasonable. I was glad we'd ordered the okra as there wasn't a lot of veg in the dishes to go round. I just wished I had enough space in me to finish off the sauces as they were goooooood and we had a vibrant variety of flavours. All in all, I'd highly recommend Vojan - easily the best takeaway curry I've had in London. Vojan - you rule.

This was weird...

When I left my last job, my colleagues gave me a brilliant leaving present - a subscription to Olive magazine. I've been really looking forward to my first issue, and as I came in last night, I was thinking about eating one of the cakes I'd made before I went out. As I came in I saw that my first issue of Olive had arrived in yesterday's post. It's got a rare and juicy-looking hunk of roast beef on the front, which immediately made me feel hungry, but what I thought was odd was the insert - a little booklet of 30 irresistible cakes, with four fairy cakes decorated with buttercream on the cover. I haven't baked fairy cakes for ages, and I can't remember ever topping little cakes with buttercream before, so I just thought this was an interesting coincidence. Of all the foods to see yesterday...

Fairy cakes

When I was at school we used to go to my grandparents' for tea, once a week. My Mum disputes this, saying it wasn't anything like that often, but that's how I remember it. My grandmother would pick us up from school, give us a caramel bar each, and tell us not to tell our mother as we didn't have sweets very often at home. Then, almost without exception, we'd be spoiled with a feast of steak and homemade chips. The steak would be slathered in butter and grilled and the chips double-fried for extra oomph. We'd have something with Wall's vanilla ice-cream for pudding - usually tinned pineapple or other fruit.

But fairy cakes are the food I most associate with my grandmother. She seemed to make them all the time - squashed fly cakes (with sultanas and raisins), which were my elder brother's favourite, chocolate cakes for me. Everyone else seemed to like both. She also made butterfly cakes with whipped cream filling, scones, eclairs and lots of other amazing things for a greedy child to savour. I can't remember when I began 'helping' her bake cakes in the kitchen, but I really loved it and that experience played a great part in developing my deep passion for food.

Every now and then I feel the need to bake - I know my mum gets it too - and yesterday was one of those times. I realised I had all the right ingredients, which doesn't often happen, so I decided to bake a few chocolate fairy cakes. I didn't have any chocolate to hand to melt on the top as my gran would have done (it was always bourneville, with a cadbury's button squished in the top), but I made chocolate butter cream and added a smartie on each for a bit of colour. I've got a horrible cold so I'm not even sure I can taste them properly, but a bit of baking made me feel much better.

Bangers with mustard mash

I suppose I didn't leave it very long before more roasted sausages... Yesterday's meal was so welcome that after a late breakfast/brunch of scrambled eggs on toast, we had a 4 o'clock lunch/supper/tea of Taste the Difference Ultimate Pork Chipolatas, roasted with more onions, carrots and a courgette, served with mustard-mashed new potatoes.

I had to drain the pan again though as there was so much watery liquid - I think I might grill these sausages next time.

How did I forget about sausages?

Sausages are one of my favourite foods. And this is one of my favourite meals. I usually have it virtually every week in winter, so I'm not sure why I haven't cooked it for so long. I try not to think about what goes in to sausages, so in an attempt to minimise the rubbish we're eating I like to buy good quality sausages from farmers' markets and the butcher. Sadly, more often than not I find I don't manage it and end up buying them from supermarkets - but only their 'quality' ranges.

Rather surprisingly, a few years ago I did some taste tests with the three supermarkets near where I was living - Safeway, Tesco and Waitrose. After much testing, I found the Safeway range to shrink the least on cooking - an important quality in a sausage. And they had a great range of flavours. I thought the Waitrose range was a bit disappointing and they had very thick sausage skins which was rather unappealing, but I may have had higher expectations for their sausages than the others as their meat always seems to be good quality. I admit, I was never a big fan of buying meat in Tesco, although my brother always preferred Tesco to our local Safeway, but even he admitted the Safeway sausages beat the Tesco ones. Having written this, I'll probably find out they all are from the same supplier...

More recently, I tend to buy Sainsbury's taste the difference sausages as there are two Sainsbury's supermarkets nearby - and their Ultimate Pork Chipolatas are great. But on Friday night we cooked the packet of Taste the Difference Toulouse sausages that had been stinking out my fridge for a couple of days. I roasted them in a pan with a couple of red onions, some whole, unpeeled garlic cloves, a large carrot in batons, a courgette and most of a green pepper. They produced so much water I drained the pan a couple of times as I wanted the meal to roast, not poach - this was hugely disappointing as I'm sure they don't usually seem to be pumped with so much water.

As you can see, we had leeks in white sauce (with lots of grated nutmeg) as an accompaniment. The Toulouse sausages had a satisfyingly meaty texture and flavour and were stuffed full of garlic and herbs (unsurprisingly, after smelling them in my fridge). Despite the excess liquid produced, I like them. And as I said, I try not to think too much about what goes in them anyway. Maybe one day I'll make my own so I can be sure.

This has to be a meal I'd consider if I ever have to choose my own last supper, although I bet I'd probably forget it and choose steak instead.

And for lunch on Friday, I had...

Penne pasta with pesto, pinenuts and parmesan. And veg, but that doesn't begin with a 'p' so I thought I'd put that in the next sentence. Alliteration - every writer's friend. The veg included an onion, a courgette and a tomato. The pasta was brown, so I felt full for longer - I'm assuming I did as that's what you're supposed to find with brown pasta. I just like the more fibrous flavour and consistency, if you cook it al dente - a bit like brown rice versus white rice, as brown's just more interesting.

Anyway, I was full and felt better. I've got a cold at the moment, and as my mother always told me, 'feed and cold and starve a fever'. I tend to feed both, but I'm sure it doesn't matter.

Mmmm, veggie fajitas

This is just such a good, quick lunch. I suppose it's not really fajitas as it's not served on a sizzling plate with grated cheese and all the extras (is that what makes a fajita a fajita?), but it's warm tortillas wrapped around salsa, sour cream (or actually natural yoghurt, as it is here), warm veg stirfried with cayenne pepper, lots of garlic and sometimes some lime or lemon juice or chillis. Such nice flavours and there's something wonderful about eating a warm, soft tortilla, filled with hot and spicy food, from your hands with salsa and sour cream and the cooking juices running down your fingers. I gave myself a bit too much veg this time and it all collapsed a bit so I ended up eating it with a knife and fork and denying myself all that pleasure. It was still good though.

Update on the week's eating - Sat supper to today

We were out for dinner with friends on Saturday evening. We went to Mem & Laz, a cheap eaterie in Islington. I've only been there once before and had a fantastic aubergine nest for starters (around £3 or so - a large aubergine slice filled with roasted veg, covered with melted mozzarella) and fishcakes for mains (£6ish), and my boyfriend had a trio of deep-fried cheeses (perhaps mozzarella, brie and camembert) with cranberry sauce followed by sea bass, which came with virtually nothing at all.

We've now learnt to order the more middle-eastern food on the menu, particularly after our experience on Saturday, which really wasn't very good. I'd smelt someone cooking steak just down the road from the restaurant, so there was only one meal on my mind. They did cook it as rare as I'd asked for, which seems quite unusual these days, but it was lacking flavour and they served it with just a pile of average chips, a couple of mushrooms and a grilled tomato - no salad garnish or green at all and I felt I needed some. For £10 something, I'd expected a little better and I wished I'd had the stuffed aubergine. My boyfriend's prawn linguini was rubbish too (tasted like a Heinz shapes tomato sauce). The soup seemed ok, but could have done with some more bread, and my friend who had the kofta with rice seemed to have made the best choice as it looked good. I know to choose aubergine next time.

Sunday lunch wasn't a traditional one, although we did have it last Sunday too - a cleansing salad with anchovies, as pictured above, then another round of chicken fajitas in the evening, sadly not pictured. On Monday evening we had spaghetti bolognese, using a pot of bolognese from the freezer that I'd made on the lasagne evening last week. Tuesday, I was out for Vietnamese in Old Street with the girls. I had bun with prawns which was nice, but I thought it didn't taste of very much at all, and spring rolls to start, which were the same - maybe I was coming down with the cold I've got now.

Last night, I was out for drinks and we shared some nachos (not v. healthy) and I had some toast when I got in to soak up the booze, but couldn't sleep after that. Note to self - don't shove two slice of toast down you just before going to bed. These veggie fajitas were my lunch yesterday - there was a massive pile of veg (courgettes, peppers, onions and a few mushrooms). Oh, I think I'm going to have to have that for lunch again today, with a tortilla or two and heaps of salsa. So addictive.

Update on the week's eating - Thurs to Sat lunch

I can't believe I haven't blogged for an entire week. It's gone so fast. And I'm finding it difficult to remember everything I've eaten, which is most unusual for me. Lets think:

I had this prawn and noodle stirfry one day last week - I think it was probably Thursday as we'd been out till quite late and wanted some fast food. It was nice - I used a Blue Dragon oyster and spring onion sauce, some big prawns, chopped up veg including carrots, onions, courgettes, peppers and a lone leek, and we shared a block of sharwood's thin noodles and sprinkled it with fresh coriander. It was tasty.

On Friday lunchtime I was starving and wanted some energy food, so I made a pasta with pesto, an onion, a large courgette and cubed mozzarella (the 'light' version from Sainsbury's Be Good to Yourself - which was fine in this). Hmmm, I might have pasta and pesto today, I do fancy that.

For friday supper we had salmon, poached in the microwave in my fish steamer with semi-mashed, garlicky new potatoes, leeks in white sauce and broccoli. Sadly I don't have a photo of this meal - I must have been tired and hungry.

At the weekend my aunt came round for lunch and we gave her chicken fajitas. They were good and I realised how long it had been since I'd had fajitas. When I was a student I used to make myself veggie fajitas regularly for lunch - it was a quick, nutritious meal and tastes so good. Expect to see more tortilla-based platefuls on this blog soon!